DJIBOUTI SHAKEN

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  Djibouti, Djibouti
Sunday, May 10, 2009

So all is right with the world, including Somaliland, until I see our plane land, that is.  Uh oh, now I know how Benigno Aquino felt on the runway.  I'm looking at my death, and it has four propellers.  At first I thought the plane was an old DC-3, just like the first plane I flew in many years ago in my childhood.  This should be interesting.  Then the news gets worse.  The plane is not only an old Russian model, but is flown to this day by real live Russians, mercenaries from the old Evil Empire!  And sure enough, there they are when we enter the plane, sipping bad coffee and wearing dirty T-shirts.  Remember Kramer's two Russian cable guys on the old TV series 'Seinfeld'?  Those two guys are the pilots on Daallo Airways Djibouti-Hargeisa run.  The good news is that the plane flies very low the whole way, so if we crash into the soft desert sand, which is a distinct possibility, the odds of survival are better than usual.  The windows have scratched plastic over them so I can't see anything through them anyway.  The only flight host is a six-foot Somali who could probably lift the plane out of the sand if necessary.  We get no peanuts, but we do get to Djibouti on time.
 
If I had visions of Djibouti being some sort of island of civility in the wilderness, a French version of the English modern colonial bastard city-states of Trinidad or Singapore or Gibraltar, my hopes are soon dashed.  Two out of three doesn't cut it.  If this is French colonial glory, then I'm Napoleon in rags.  The French legacy of high prices and pretentiousness is the only thing I see.  The airport itself offers the first clue, when the single exchange office only opens after the guy can be found to service his single customer, me.  Everybody else is a local I guess.  I'm starting to wish I'd settled for the $30 three-day transit visa instead of the $60 thirty-day one, but considering that I have no advance booking, I guess it's best to avoid the stress.  If there's anything worse than being in a place I don't like it's being stuck there, WITH PREJUDICE. 
 
Downtown is not much better, squalid and dirty, albeit with much higher prices than the neighboring countries.  Cabbies are obnoxious, driving old green-and-white honkers that they like to back down the street in, just to prove they can, I guess.  At least my room has AC and TV, and enough room to work out if I want, something I've foregone for days for lack of adequate food and water.  Refugees don't work out.  My mental condition is deteriorating.  I've got to plan my escape while I still can.  At least Hargeisa was cheap and appreciative.  The bus back to Ethiopia sounds sketchy, as if two days to Addis Ababa were attractive regardless, not to mention another two days to Lalibela.  Are we having fun yet?  No one said seeing every country in the world would be easy, except one person, me, and I've been known to deceive myself.  It's hot as a season in Hell, too.  What would Rimbaud do?  Chill Hardie chill.
 
Ethiopian Airlines has the monopoly on flights to Addis, so the OW is $400+.  Ouch!  Now I'm getting really depressed until I find out the RT is ONLY $300+.  Huh?  Okay, now I get it, old-fashioned capitalist psychological value.  They probably catch a few that way now, don't they?  It's like USAir charging $200 OW Flagstaff to Phoenix, while charging less than $100 OW FLG-LAX VIA PHX.  I know the power of the empty seat, simple place notation, the blessings of omission.  It's hardly the $100 cheapie I'm looking for, but still it beats suicide, at least in this heat.  My high school English teacher told us that the perfect murder was by icicle, since it leaves no tracks nor traces.  But I digress.  At least they've got a real supermarket here, complete with $5 roast chicken.  I digress again.  I pace the city trying to decide whether to risk a crowded truck back overland, through malarial miasma, to the world's poorest country.  I buy carrots, still digressing.  Finally I decide that if they take credit cards, then I'm on the plane.  They do.  Whirr birr thank you sir.  My mental condition immediately improves.  I celebrate with a whole roast chicken.  I need the protein.  I might even work out, only one day to go.  But there's more.           
 
DO NOT TAKE PHOTOS IN DJIBOUTI, OF ANY THING ANYWHERE ANY TIME!  For some reason this makes the locals livid.  There may be a permit you can obtain, but I wouldn't bother as you may end up having to show it to every Harry, Dick and Tom who can walk semi-erect.  I found this out the hard way after being warned twice by some guy in a uniform guarding a door, who I first assumed was merely guarding HIS turf, until the second time when I realized he was guarding his TURF.  He did NOT ask to see my permit btw.  Undeterred I tried again elsewhere, a simple market scene mind you, not in anyone's face, but was stopped and held for ransom by some ape with blind justice in mind and dollar signs in his eyes.  I'm too old for this shit.  He seemed very concerned as to whether I'm Russian or not, "AMERICA NUMBER ONE!"  No, I do not make this shit up.  I'm still not sure what it's all about, but it may have something to do with the glass bottle apparently thrown at me on the street yesterday.
 
I'm reading the Qu'ran now in self-penitence, looking for a clue.  The French-Arab equivalent of the Gideons seems to have left one in my room.  My spoken French is far from fluent, maybe good enough for France if not the far-flung semi-literate polyglot provinces, but my reading ability is more passable.  I've been looking for this opportunity for a long time, all about Moses and Ibrahim and... hey, wait a minute!  If I'd seen the book yesterday, I wouldn't have even left the room today, and would have been happier if not more religious.   You can have Djibouti.  As the Aussies say, I'd rather be in a pit with a 'snike'.  Lonely Planet won't tell you when a place sucks; I will.  They'll act like Djibouti is the Promised Land; I won't.  I could write the guidebook on Djibouti in one word: sucks.   It should make interesting reading.   I'm waiting for air-evac today, aka Ethiopia flight 603.  Till then I'll survive on cheap coconut bread, the one bright spot in an otherwise dismal urban landscape.  Coconut meat is supposed to be a natural laxative; I'm relaxed.  They can't even make a decent cup of coffee here; even Somaliland had that.  Djibouti could have used more Italians, less French, but I guess it's too late for that.  Sic transit gloria, g-l-o-r-i-a...

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